Mark Hancock

http://www.traillifeusa.com/who-we-are/values/membership-standards/

Our vision for Summer Camp is different. We call it "Summer Adventure" and it has nothing to do with advancement. There are hundreds (I said thousands earlier. Not sure I could qualify that, but it wouldn't surprise me...sorry if I misled) of Christian Camp facilities and we have many adventure camps competing for our attention and offering great deals. I am staying at one in WV in a few weeks with my boys to see what they offer. You are probably familiar with the neighborhood. We don't think we could compete with some of the camps and stay true to our Core Value of being debt averse. Yo

Thanks, gentlemen. Fred, I'm thankful you haven't seen any change for your family. We HAD to make a change. I was not in leadership or part of this decision, but my sons' Troop was shut down by the decision and I'm glad we had a place to go. I suspect we are not the only ones. At the same time, it is not our goal to harm BSA in any way. BSA has enough to deal with from both sides of a very intense debate. At least we only offended one side! Your former General Counsel (drafted the policy, I believe) is our National Director of Administration and, now, one of my best friends. He attends

AZMike: "Anecdotally," about 60% of the folks registering for more information on TLUSA had some involvement with BSA. About half were leaders. This is the only place we gather this info; only because we have found it helpful to know if they have had scouting experience. Some may key off on this as being competitive. It is the best way we have of determining how familiar someone is with a boys' adventure program, which is what we have. We recognize we have many folks from BSA. It helps to know which as we are setting things up. I don't think the reasons for changing over would surpri

Thanks for the warm welcome. We are committed to remaining debt averse which means we will not accept or take on any properties that are not self-sustaining. We don't envision owning our own camps since there are thousands that are very well-managed and can offer some very good high-adventure experiences. Our growth model is dependent on our membership growth which means we will not rely on corporate or any types of donations in order to build our staff and facilities. Therefore, we envision staying very lean in terms of Council offices and certainly in terms of our personnel. Our membersh

I think you would be surprised to find out how little interest we have in our numbers as compared to other organizations. We are not for everybody. We have a defined purpose and recognize we will not have mass appeal. Interesting enough, though, former BSA Troops that charter with us find their membership increases after they become TLUSA Troops. This was a surprise to us. We had no idea there would be so many people who would not be interested in BSA that see something that we are doing that attracts them. Still, though we consider our growth to be significant (over 10,000 members in les